


Live in Salt

by Madtom_Publius



Series: Laurens Lives AU [6]
Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF
Genre: Animal Abuse, Gen, Laurens Lives AU, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Loathing, Slavery mention, Suicidal Thoughts, bad parenting philosophy, battlefield gore descriptions, in that a riding crop is being used on a horse because it's the 18th century, period medical practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6596920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madtom_Publius/pseuds/Madtom_Publius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Henry try to have a conversation about a week after Henry returns to Mepkin. Family dynamics are universally uncomfortable and Henry is not good at handling his son's PTSD. John then goes for a ride to clear his head and eventually has some revelations about parenting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally authored by Madtomedgar  
> Originally posted at http://madtomedgar.tumblr.com/post/74461261772/lams-au-drabble-set-shortly-after-henry-laurens

Henry Laurens had scarcely been back at Mepkin a week, and already a pattern was starting to present itself. Immediately upon the conclusion of supper, the girls would, of course, retire. An uneasy silence followed their departure, and Harry barely lingered long enough to sample the requisite port before fleeing in discomfort at the static energy accumulating between his father and elder brother, pleading letters he must answer which they all knew were purely fictional. That left John and Henry avoiding each others eyes across a too-big table lined with guttering, decadent candles, alone except for the presence of the unfortunate enslaved footman whose comfort neither man even considered. There should be so much for them to say to each other, and perhaps that was the problem, perhaps there was simply too much for a resolution to be even begun.

John fidgeted with his glass, staring desolately at the patterns the candlelight made in the wine. It smarted, knowing that it was his own presence that drove his siblings, to whom he should have been something of a demi-parent, from the room and brought uneasiness to the house.  _They would all be be happier without you,_ his conscience taunted in his father's voice. _Harry would make an excellent heir_. There was no moving forward with his father until he had made amends, or at least begged an unearned forgiveness from him. But where could he start in the endless and relentless mass of wrongs he'd committed? With Martha? Her death, his neglect, or his having to marry her in the first place? Or perhaps his studies. He'd been rebellious in his desires there, failed to cheerfully submit to his father's better judgement, and squandered his opportunity to make a character for himself as a lawyer. What was a former soldier with an unfinished law degree good for, anyway? Even as a soldier he had not performed as he ought. He’d made enemies of his father’s friends, managed to miss every opportunity for command in a significant engagement, and those he’d been in had, for the most part, been failures. Should he apologize first for his failure as a diplomat, or his reluctance to acquiesce to his father’s wishes that he be his right hand in that sphere, or that the one time he’d tried to be a good son it had only brought more disgrace upon his career by going behind General Washington’s back? And then there was Jemmy. No amount of repentance could remove from him the mark of Cain, which his father surely could not ignore. And then there were the failures and betrayals he could never bring himself to apologize for, because he would have to name the unmentionable to do so. _You would have been a better son if you’d fallen at Yorktown or Savannah, at least then he could say you died a hero._   Instead it was his fate to continue, marked now permanently with his failure and disgrace. He'd read that the voice of the devil always presented itself as truth, and yet in this case the voice was so undeniably accurate that he could not console himself with that possibility. 

Henry finally looked up to fix his son with a questioning gaze, clearing his throat before he spoke. “You should know your sisters are very proud of their brother the war hero." 

John winced visibly at the stinging appellation. "Please don’t.” 

Really, Henry thought, the lad had to learn to take a compliment. It was all well and good that he’d decided he needed some modesty, but this was ridiculous. “But you are a h–” 

“Please, Father, don’t call me what I’m not.” John cut him off, tense and miserable. 

Henry sighed heavily. If Jacky was fishing for compliments, that would be troubling indeed. His oldest son had always been too dependent on his affection and perhaps not dependent enough on his approval. But John had been strangely uncomfortable around him since his return. Perhaps a small show of paternal love would not go amiss. He was too old to be in much danger of spoiling with kindness now. “Jack, the report in London was that you..." Even now that he was presented with the living, breathing proof of the report's falsehood, the prospect was still too painful to name outright.  "hadn’t survived… you cannot imagine my joy when I found out you had…” Henry tried to soften his tone, but decades of habit had made it almost impossible for him to be other than stern with his son. 

Not letting his father finish his statement, John rose haltingly from his seat. “Maybe it would have been better if I had not.” The voice had slipped past his lips before he could stop it. Coward. Child. He couldn't wait for the inevitable rebuke his father was sure to unleash on him for such self-indulgent impudence. Without giving Henry time to respond, he turned on his heal and stormed out in a haze of shame and anger towards the stables. If he was still much longer, his thoughts threatened to catch up to him, and he had promised Alexander and Frances, he had promised them, and he could not break his word.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a lot more graphic and intense than the last one, so if you are particularly sensitive to gore, trauma response descriptions, violence involving animals, or thoughts about death and dying, you should skip this one. Nothing that will compromise your understanding of plot happens in it.

Laurens made his way through the dark to the stables, stumbling once or twice in his haste. The grooms would be asleep by now. So much the better. He needed solitude, and the thought of fleeing the suffocating company of his father only to rush headlong into the cloying performance of the enslaved grooms was almost enough to send him stomping off aimlessly into the night. But he needed to move faster than his own feet would carry him if he was to outstrip the taunting voice dragging him to actions he’d sworn not to take. Had already attempted to take and failed. And the grooms would certainly be asleep by this hour. The loud humming of the innumerable insects that always filled the Carolina spring air only augmented the buzzing in his brain. He needed to ride, to let the burning in his thighs and the wind stinging his ears and the gentle threat of falling rise in pitch until his existence was reduced to his own breathing and the pounding of the horse’s hooves. John let himself into the stable, finding Souchong, the mare he’d been using since his return after the war, without issues. He liked to think they’d formed something of a bond over the past year. She was like him: excellent pedigree but a poor breeder, too hot-tempered to ever make a good lady’s mount, the purpose her build ought to have indicated, far too much money sunk in her to get shed of her, and yet what a disappointment she’d turned out to be. Sou grumbled when John woke her, resisting the bit admirably, and he was confident the only reason he was able to get her saddled was the confinement of the stall limiting how much of a fight she could put up. As he was buckling the saddle straps he realized he’d left his spurs back at the house in his hurry to be out of there. The crop always seemed especially cruel with Sou, but he couldn’t go back, and she was too stubborn and it was too late for her to give him what he wanted without encouragement. He’d give her a good brushing and a sugar lump when they got back, he rationalized as he grabbed the crop off the wall. His hands shook as he led the disgruntled mare outside.

She huffed at him when he mounted, shifting testily under his weight, but obliged immediately when John kicked his heels, bolting with nearly enough force to unseat him. He wished not for the first time that he was a poor enough rider for that to be a real possibility. The air was thick and heavy and too-sweet with the stagnating, overripe scent of flowers. They needed a good thunder-storm to clean it out. It felt achingly familiar to the air between Alexander’s thighs. John flicked the crop expertly over the mare’s flank, stinging her but not wounding her, and she took off at a full run. How easily the scents of magnolias and apples morphed into the putrid stench of pox-rotted flesh, the wood smoke rising from the cabins into acrid musket fire. The sound from the mare’s hooves multiplied until John’s head was pounding with the force of a cavalry charge, cannons booming inside his skull.

_Your sisters are very proud of their brother the war hero_

John let the reigns slip from his hands and dug his heels into the horse’s side with a savage kick, letting his thighs squeeze around her involuntarily to hold himself steady as she surged under him. _Like Alexander had._ He cursed the survival instinct which kept him aloft as his upper body slackened and his eyes unfocused until he could no longer see the path ahead. Images flitted before him, faces: a dead soldier at Brandywine, his face half-gone, John’s boot slipping in the mess of brain splattered about the ground next to it; Fayette’s face curdled and bloodless and tear-stained as the surgeon had worked on his led; Martha’s face contorted in pain and pleasure as she stilled and moaned atop him; blood spurting from the face of the man next to him at Germantown as the bayonet retreated; the rotting face of a man so covered in pox as to be unrecognizable leaning against the barricade in Savannah, still rattling with breath; Jem’s face, horridly still; Alexander’s face red and slack and battered and clammy, his eyes glazed and vacant as he lay under his dead horse…

Sou began to slow. John brought the crop down hard, and again, and again, felt her jerk at each blow until she reached her full speed, felt her muscles tense and felt the bottom drop from his stomach as she leapt the rivlet she’d come to, felt the jolt of the impact as she landed and then sped on. His family thought him a hero. But a hero was a man who could sleep at night, who had no need to risk death to run from the smells and the sights and the sounds of his deeds. A hero would remember such deeds unflinchingly, not with an obscene combination of overwhelming nausea and sick arousal. The war had soaked into his skin and he’d not yet discovered the trick to wash it out. How could the others not smell it on him, not perceive the constant reek of blood and gunpowder and other elements too awful to name which constantly emanated from his person?

One of his men screamed. He pulled his horse up too sharply. She reared furiously, and he scrambled, nearly losing his balance and achieving the desired end. She steadied, chiding him and refusing to resume her forward motion, circling and tossing her head indignantly. As the adrenalein seeped from his mind and gut into his limbs, John slowly realized that the scream had been a fox, not the death-cry of a man with a bayonet in him. He could have kissed that creature. In the seconds when the mare had bucked and he’d slipped from his saddle the clarity he’d been chasing had taken hold of him. Everything receded but the purity of reflex and the white flood of ineffable sensation in his brain. Time had slowed and he’d watched serene, from above as he’d righted himself, the rhythm of his heart and the beast’s roaring like applause, the buzzing silenced, everything standing out sharp and hard in the moonlight. It was a fleeting peace he’d only been able to achieve in little deaths, and this self-stimulation gave only a thin shadow of what he’d get in true situations.

Sou stamped and whinnied impatiently. He’d ridden her too hard. Her sides were lathered and she’d made it clear since his arrival in the stables that she wanted to sleep. John blinked rapidly, returning to himself, and realized that they were now miles away from the stables and the house. It would be early morning when they got back. Both the horse and rider were seized with a violent trembling, Sou from cold and exhaustion, John from the after-effects of his madness. He pointed her head in the direction of home and let her make the trek back at her own pace. Memory began pressing in on him again. It was never chased away for long. He’d trembled in Alexander’s arms for hours after their union at Yorktown while his dear had fretted and fussed over him. He’d trembled as Martha had reached for him on their wedding night, and she’d mistaken it for anticipation, kissed him and called him a romantic. He’d trembled with rage as he’d thrown his arms wide to receive the enemy’s deliverance after his troops had shamed him so thoroughly. Somewhere far back in his mind, he wondered if he this was a permanent malady, to simultaneously relive in lurid and swimming detail every instant similar to the one he was currently living. Would it worsen? Would there come a point when he would no longer be able to distinguish between memory and reality? When he would truly go mad? Sou faltered on her path, disturbed by a rabbit, her head rearing back in alarm, but he kept her steady. How long, he wondered, would it take them to find him if he were to be thrown? He could picture his father scoffing in disgust, _damned fool is spared countless times in battle by God’s grace, manages to get himself killed on some drunken galavant. What a waste!_ Greene had spat something similar when he thought John was unconscious after Combahee, when it was still uncertain whether he would recover, when the wound on his chest was still singed and crusting… _What a waste_. To be spared only to lose his reason and become a burden, a terror, a pity… The dogwoods were starting to put out flowers, one or two white splashes peeking out amongst the green-black of the trees. In the moonlight they looked like dead things, the color of pus leaking from the pocks, the color of the soldiers who’d been fished out of the river, the color of the dead flesh peeled excruciatingly from his chest. He let Sou trudge along at her snail’s pace as he drifted off, the memories merging and distorting in the surreality of half-sleep until she halted, tossing her head and stepping backwards and forwards nervously, tugging him back into focus.

They’d come to the stream she’d jumped earlier, and now she was refusing to cross. John backed her up and tried to get her to do it again. It took three attempts and several blows from the crop, and she tried to throw him each time, but he finally persuaded her into getting over the stream. Bullied her, really. Was that what he was, a bully? He’d never considered himself one before his last injury, yet upon sober reflection the conclusion was difficult to escape. He had to whip Sou periodically now to keep her moving, she was so exhausted. He mitigated the necessary harshness with words of encouragement, promises that if she was just good a little longer she could rest. He wanted to retch; he sounded like his father, holding out the prospect of approval and love as the reward for going against what every fiber of one’s being was screaming and conforming to his will, coming down swift and merciless on any whiff of laziness.

John bent forward to place a kiss between Sou’s ears. They were alike. At some point rest became more appealing to them than any reward that could be tendered, but, lazy obstinate fools that they were, they were far too wicked to ever be allowed that. They were still more than a mile from the stables, but Laurens dismounted and slipped the reins over Sou’s ears to lead her the rest of the way. If he was not a burden to his family already, he would in all likelihood be so soon enough. No reason to unfairly burden Sou as well. The grass was wet against his stockings. He’d neglected to change into his boots before he set out and now his shoes and stockings would be in a truly frightful state by the time he reached home.

The moon had sunk low over the trees and the stars stood out cold and implacable against the sky. Something about the sheer number of them made him feel small and uneasy. The solitude he’d needed like air earlier now felt unbearably thin, like the air in the high Alps in Switzerland, sucked out into the cold and star infested heavens, leaving him empty and light and gasping. His body ached, he began to realize; his thighs from the strain of keeping himself aright on such a furious gallop while the reins flapped uselessly against his mount’s neck, and something had wrenched in his back and right arm in his struggle not to be thrown. The sensation was muted and far off, but he’d feel it enough tomorrow once he’d returned to his body. Now it only added to the dizzying isolation, unpleasantly like the laudanum hazes he’d become too acquainted with, only sans the awful nausea the drug brought with it. Everything stood out too starkly in the moonlight, aloof and large and forbidding, silently refusing him any sort of companionship in this place where he should be most at home, most at ease. He’d give anything to have Alexander with him now, or at least to have him waiting, warm and comforting and grounding, at his destination, but the loneliness would follow him from the fields to the stables and up the stairs to his own room like his shadow. He was so tired, the sort of tired that made good sleep impossible. He’d either be too exhausted to fall asleep at all, or he’s sleep too heavily and wake feeling no better in the morning.

The stables came into view around the line of trees, the house not far past them, the buildings standing out black against the speckled and glowing sky, like holes where what they represented ought to be, revealing, for once, John mused darkly, their true natures. He let his mind drift again for the final leg of their journey as his body led Sou the rest of the way, opened the doors of the stable, led her through, removed bridle and saddle, hung them back on the wall and replaced the crop. He could feel its reproachful gaze trained unmovingly on him as he saw to the mare, _this is what you are, no petty acts of repentance can alter that. You’re a selfish, inconsiderate child._ He let the voice continue, not ignoring it but not letting it distract his body from mechanically rubbing Sou down thoroughly, checking her hooves and legs, cleaning the cuts on her flank where he’d hit her too hard, brushing her and telling her what a good girl she was. He’d started losing his connection to his body after Brandywine… maybe before that, maybe it had started with Martha… but with her he always came back to himself once she was no longer touching him, and he only floated away when her caresses began, so it must have been after Brandywine that this started. It was so rare now that he ever comfortably inhabited the body he’d used to take completely for granted as a solid part of himself, _as_ himself. He was either detached and totally numb to it, floating just barely inside, seeing through its eyes but feeling nothing, or so intensely aware of every sensation that he could barely stand it. At some point he realized he had no idea how long he’d been brushing Sou. It could have been years of minutes. Perhaps he’d always been standing in the suddenly unfamiliar stable in the near dark brushing this horse. A mocking-bird was singing outside and the moon was gone. The sun would begin to rear its ugly head before long. John finished brushing her hurriedly, discomfited, and fished a stray apple from where the grooms kept them and offered it to her, promising the sugar lumps tomorrow, covering her well against the cold. She didn’t want his treat, only rest, so he left it on the floor of her stall so she could have it in the morning.

The house pulled on him insistently, reminiscent of the theories of Newton he’d read once, hundreds of years ago, before he had gotten stuck brushing his horse. He didn’t want to go towards it, but he could no more resist it than could the steel the magnet. He left his muddy shoes on the front step so they wouldn’t make noise on the stairs and wake someone. His body felt heavy and unwieldly as he stumbled through the hall and mounted the stairs, and the carpet on them clung to his damp feet like the stinking mud he’d had to trudge through in Georgia. In the hallway, surrounded on all sides by the closed doors of his peacefully sleeping family, the loneliness had a mass, snaking miasma-like from under the bedroom doors, exacerbating the grey silence pulsing through the house. Standing there, John felt shut out, and the thought that this was how his ghost would feel if he had died at Combahee flitted through his mind. The fog made the air stick in his lungs like the natural humidity never had.

There were letters he needed to write, dozens of responses he’d put off anywhere from a few days to nearly a month. Why was it that he only seemed to remember them when he wouldn’t be able to do anything about them? Why, after everything that had been wasted on his “potential” was it so damned painful to perform such a basic task? But he’d once again squandered his evening with self-indulgence and he couldn’t exactly remedy this at two o’clock in the morning, if only because his father would grumble about candles not growing on trees. How had it happened that after five years of fighting in a war, winning independence for his country, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, being entrusted with a diplomatic mission of the utmost importance, he found himself in exactly the same position that he’d been in when he was a boy of fourteen? How had he so contrived to accomplish nothing at such great expense? How was he supposed to just accept that all his suffering and all his effort and all his dreams had, in this as in so many other ways, been for nothing? The cook and some of the others would be up soon, and if he wanted to avoid them he’d have to retreat to his own chamber and at least try to sleep. The sheets would be barren and cold for all their luxury, and he’d gladly change their empty comfort for the cramped and noisy aides’ quarters.

Fumbling with his doorknob, he noticed a sliver of light peeking out from under Frances’ door.  John’s breath caught in his chest. There was no visible smoke, no smell of burning bedding, but that did nothing to allay the terror filling him. Good God, if the foolish girl had set fire to her room… She’d been angry and grief-stricken since she’d arrived, but surely she wasn’t so unhinged by her loss as to do something so mad. Henry’s first thought would have been deadly subterfuge, but Frances seemed the more likely culprit to John, either out of her childish malice or carelessness. He was furious as he felt her door for heat. How dare she, after everything he’d been through to cause her to exist and to be his, after all he’d endured with Martha, after he’d had to convince himself to love her, and that he could be a good parent to her, for her to willfully and wantonly destroy herself like this… but the door was cool to the touch. Holding his breath, he turned the knob and pushed it open. Frances was sound asleep in her bed, an open book resting comically over her face, the hazardous candle harmlessly burning low in its pewter holder. The fear that had been knotting in John’s chest exploded into a short burst of hysterical chuckling which quickly diffused into a maudlin tenderness. His daughter looked so small in the oversized bed, and he knew she was terribly alone and at sea here. They were alike in that way. He removed the book from her face and replaced it on the nightstand, marking her place so she wouldn’t have to fret about losing it in the morning, the gesture reminding him of the many times he’d done this for Patsy when they were young. He smoothed the girl’s hair gently away from her face and blew out the candle.

Perhaps the sudden darkness in the room triggered the overwhelming wave of sentiment and exhaustion, or perhaps he’d merely been still long enough for it to catch up with him, but suddenly the thought of opening the door, exiting back into the oppressive hallway, closing it behind him, and going through the interminable steps of getting into his own too-large and too-empty bed only to be wakened by the horrors of his mind was nothing short of crippling. Leaning over the bed, John placed a soft, grateful kiss on his daughter’s head before padding around to the other side to pull back the covers and climb in with her. She was too-warm in the particular way that sleeping children always were, and she turned and fretted, mumbling incoherently at the new presence before she settled back down, a tiny hand gripping the fabric of his coat. The clean, innocent scent from the top of her head chased away the stench of battle so decisively that tears of the most intense love and gratitude John had ever felt began leaking out at the corners of his eyes. Alexander had been wrong, Frances would have grown up just fine without him, but if he were to survive living through the war he needed her. Her warmth and her scent and her weight curled against him transformed the close darkness from a space of isolation and terror into one of safety where he could sleep free from his own thoughts. It didn’t occur to him to wonder what she or anyone else would think in the morning when they discovered him.


End file.
